Statue of New Brunswick Revolutionary War figure planned

New Brunswick Public SculptureA life-size bronze statue of Col. John Neilson reading the Declaration of Independence from a tavern table in New Brunswick on July 9, 1776, is slated to be unveiled in Monument Square on the corners of George Street and Livingston Avenue.

NEW BRUNSWICK — A New Brunswick group is working to immortalize a moment in the city’s Revolutionary War history.

New Brunswick Public Sculpture, a nonprofit, is commissioning a life-size bronze statue of Col. John Neilson, a New Jersey native who gave one of the earliest readings of the Declaration of Independence on July 9, 1776, while standing before a crowd in New Brunswick.

The statue will be installed on George Street and Livingston Avenue, joining the Civil War Soldier in Monument Square. The sculpture will stand 10 feet tall — it will include the tavern table he stood upon — and depict the 31-year-old Neilson reading the now immortal document.

"Not only is it a local but a national historical event that happened in New Brunswick," said Pam Stefanek, executive director of the group. "There’s a lot of history in the New Brunswick area," she said. "We want to bring that to life."

The sculpture will also include the names of the 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence.

Neilson was a local merchant who spoke out against oppressive taxes from the British crown. During the war, he led one of the two regiments of the Middlesex County militia.

Born March 11, 1745, in the busy port community of Raritan Landing across the Raritan River, Neilson was raised by his uncle James Neilson, one of the first settlers and businessmen in New Brunswick. The Neilsons had emigrated from Belfast, Ireland. Neilson’s father died when he was an infant. As the city thrived as a Colonial trading hub, local historians say the Neilson house on Burnet Street became "a haven for revolutionary activity."

Neilson became a well-known local Revolutionary. He was asked to join the Continental Congress as it drafted the Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia. He declined, however, due to his duties in New Brunswick, so instead the Congress sent him one of the first copies which he read in front of a tavern on present day Neilson and Albany Streets.

"A lot of people know Neilson Street but they don’t know who Col. Neilson was," said Greg Ritter, executive director of New Brunswick Public Sculpture.

By the end of the war, Neilson had become the state’s deputy quartermaster general and relocated with his family to Trenton. However, he returned to New Brunswick in 1783 and inherited his uncle’s considerable wealth, including land that eventually became part of the Rutgers University campus. Neilson worked with church leaders to build the city’s first public school and dabbled in politics in the state legislature for two years, but put most of his energy into local affairs. When New Brunswick was chartered as a city by the state legislature in 1784, Neilson was among the original signers.

Stefanek said the group is searching both locally and nationally for sculptors because artists skilled in figurative art are relatively few. New Brunswick Public Sculpture formed in 2006 and has raised two-thirds of funds for the $150,000 project. The statue is being paid for entirely through private donations or fundraisers, Stefanek said. The City Council approved installing the statue on July 6.

"There’s so much history of the Revolutionary War in New Brunswick," Ritter said. "It changed the course of the world." He said the group plans to commission sculptures in the future of New Brunswick native Joyce Kilmer, a poet, journalist and soldier, and Paul Robeson, a Rutgers alum and noted scholar, artist and activist.